


bitterness beneath the tongue

by Aris



Series: dreams (are for people who are sleeping) [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Communication Is God Tier, Depression, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Herbology, M/M, Magic Shops, Magical Realism, Self-Harm, Shapeshifting, Smoking, Witches, non-binary kenma, poorly explained magic gl
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-02-15 05:04:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13023810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aris/pseuds/Aris
Summary: "And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter— they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long."This is not a bad day, he thinks, making his way up the stairs, this is a normal day, a day squeezed between two days of the same, and Kuroo knows not how long he has been drowning, a little at a time. He has nothing to measure what he feels inside against, no rulers or weights or references, only which that he feels, and he knows that, pound by pound and meter by meter, he is sinking.(or, Kuroo is a little more than in love with Bokuto, and a little less than coping with his past)





	1. repeat to yourself that they're not really gone

**Author's Note:**

> its me, aris, back with My Furry Boys and a plath quote
> 
> note: the previous installment of this series is actually going to chapter 3 of this fic. for that reason, i have removed the content of that oneshot and will replace it after this has been posted. thanks for understanding!

Kuroo misses his mother the sharpest while painting.

He finds her among the shades, memories he can’t be sure are reality; the shades of her eyes blend in with the bark of an autumn day in a park besides his family home, withering branches as thick eyelashes and the tumbling uproar of malting leaves in a gust of wind too similar to a laugh he remembers, warped. She is among the rivers he paints, the night skies, the peaceful rice fields; she never did hide, too proud and too royal, and each sunset is a nostalgic off-colour from her favourite lipstick.

He sees her the most in these reds. Sundowns and leaves, rock sides and rubies. He lays this onto canvases, smudges the paint with the bottoms of his palms, the sharpness of his knuckles. Blends out in purples and pinks and warm mahoganies till an approximation of a stranger he longs to know appears among tacky acrylics.

He steps back, and all he can see is her blood.

(His hands are red.)

 

* * *

 

The professor moves to sketch a vague outline of a leaf on the board behind him, and then, with a flick of the wrist, separates the chalk from the green slate and allows it to rise upwards. It twirls in the air, retaining it’s 2D image at every angle even as the fluorescent lights above cast a unforgiving glare between dusty chalk particles, casting a strange, dancing shadow on the floor below. He talks on about the leaf’s ridges compared to another’s, basics on how to identify the herb when it grows in healthily, and the trawl of his voice is wonderfully lulling to Kuroo’s tired mind. The more he tries to concentrate on the shifting imagery, the more his eyes strain and ache.

It’s mid August, and autumn proper longs to set in amongst the dying summer flowers. Their classroom, provided after hours from a local university, is at the perfect angle to catch the richness of the setting sun as it sinks down behind the tennis courts far west of the building’s carpark. The reddish tones slide under the half closed blinds and spill out where his hand lay sprawled out against the side of his notebook, filling his palm with dark shadows and bloodying his thumb in a muted scarlet.

Carefully, he shifts it away.

“Hey,” Suga murmurs abruptly from his side, spooking a small jump from him, “Removes negative energy from the home, Rue?” Kuroo glances back up to the lecturer, now discussing humidity spell’s impact on Thyme and others of the Lamiaceae family, and then pulls a face at Suga’s poorly hidden smirk at catching him unawares.

“Suga.”

“I’m a friend in need, Kuroo, seeking valuable advice from a knowledgeable classmate.” Kuroo snorts into the back of his hand, and then coughs quickly to avoid the gaze of the row.

“Right. A friend.”

“You wouldn’t turn me down in my darkest hour, would you?” Suga implores further, tipping his head playfully to the side in such a way that a few silver strands fall over his eyes, a pink sheen just discernible around the shifted iris.

“Your darkest - right. Sure. Rue is fine, but there’s Sage, Amber, Daffodil… depends, what kind of energy?”

Suga blinks at him, head still comically angled “Negative energy, Kuroo.”

Sighing, Kuroo sinks down on the desk beneath him, elbows scraping against the chipping wood as they slide into a lazy splay that knocks Suga’s upper arm obnoxiously. For all they tease each other, he’s grateful for Suga’s presence on the course - he’d been nervous, going back into a learning environment after graduating a year prior and taking on his mother’s shop in the same stride, but the course had been surprisingly gentle work-load wise, and thankfully no other feline shifters seemed to be present this year. It wasn’t a small class, but mainly consisted of older folk attending to renew their license or just refresh on the basics - creating a more laid-back, helpful vibe than the lecturer series Kuroo had dropped from in his second year. Suga was the only other there close to Kuroo in age, and they’d bonded well in a practical demonstration on the first week of the course in dealing with potentially carnivorous herb variations in a safety effective way. He’d almost lost a finger, but still. Effective.

“But like, negative spiritual energy, negative emotional energy… in a new home, a old home, a home where someone died. It’s different. Rue is more of a generic base for other herbs.” The reverberations of his own voice grate against the outcrop of his wrist, and he can almost smell Cypress in the air - spicy, smokey where it burns hotter and crumbles to a blackness. A ceremony of mourning, candles placed around his bedside, willow sprigs scratching against his chest and holly stinging his palms to a sore redness. Penitence.

Suga hums thoughtfully to himself, noting something lazily down in a note document open on his screen. Kuroo takes the pause to tune back in with the professor and take down a rough sketch of a few hovering leaves, names titled neatly above them. This week is mainly comprised of revision sessions, and so Kuroo doesn’t mind the easy back and forth so much.

“I thought death rituals wasn’t until after the propagation exam this week,” comments Suga after a moment, eyes straying back to Kuroo, “Reading ahead again, huh?” He brings the pen up to his lips, smiling against the hard plastic and eyeing him with birdlike inquisitiveness.

“Something like that.”

“Hmph. Mysterious Kuroo back at it again. I like it.”

Kuroo rolls his eyes, “Reading a book isn’t mysterious, Suga.”

“What book, then?” He prompts

“Shouldn’t you be taking notes?”

“Ahh, so mysterious!”

“Spend less time with Oikawa, please.” Feathers ruffle in a blatant show of Suga’s amusement, but Kuroo doesn’t glance over at the gathering of feathers resting down the back of Suga’s chair. Suga is proud of his presentation. Albinos are rare shifts, though not as rare as Kuroo’s own, and tend to be perceived very positively as markers of a stronger magical persuasion. Which might not be true, but the shifts are certainly pretty and awe-inspiring, especially when paired with Suga’s dedicated grooming from his mate and zealous flair for the dramatic when it came to his magic weaving. An owner of Divinus, his magic was a curious insubstantial blue which swayed as if fog upon waves, danced between his talons and swept down to the ends of his feathers where it lingered in the faintest of glows. Showy, and quite on purpose.

Kuroo’s own magic remains firmly beneath the skin, even through shift - though, it blended indecipherably against the charcoal of his darkened fur. These sessions demand no magic, only practical knowledge that is safe for non-practitioners, and Kuroo is eternally grateful he is not asked to call on the lurking darkness in his veins, the crawling along his tendons. There’s no felines present, sure, but it’s not as if species stick tightly together these days - it’s more than likely someone present has a cat friend, partner, relative - less likely they would have mentioned the taboo of magical colouration, on Kuroo especially, but it’s a topic that comes to tongues more and more frequently as of late. Unrest in shifters tired of being confined by their secondary blood pigments. And Kuroo is a local case, infamous in his wrongness.

But, it’s a big town. And, Kuroo doesn’t have to use his magic, so it’s a moot point he fears regardless.

Sometimes, he is so desperately jealous of those who live alongside their magic proudly, he cries pitifully into his bedsheets.

Mostly, he tries not to think about it.

The professor wraps up the session with a cheery good luck for their studying, and dissolves his chalk symbols away in a gentle sheen of orange. The odd assortment of folk collect their laptops and notebooks and filter out, some sticking back with questions for the professor and others taking their time to avoid the crush in the building’s hall. It’s a relatively new university, but this particular building is joined in a rather ugly extension with a 70’s lobby area which retains a cramped hallway leading to the reception and exit doors.

Suga is humming lightly beside him as he takes his time packing his laptop and wrapping the charger cord to fit into his bag. Leaning against the row to let others pass, Kuroo feels rather horribly reminiscent of his own time attending university as an undergraduate student; he had always been the kind of person who arrived agreeably early, but 8 am lectures stripped this from him rather too quickly. Early mornings trudging past bag straps and misplaced legs to find a seat in the middle of a row, all the while balancing a coffee and trying not to hit people with his oversized books, is a memory which is still very much vivid in his mind. It fills him with an instinctive dread, only just matched by a warm remembrance.

University had been a place of many ups and downs. It was the first time Kuroo has attended a place that was not exclusively all-feline, a place where people greeted him neutrally rather than with disdain or not at all, where the fellow first years had not hesitated to clap his back or bump his arm in the corridor. It had all been so overwhelming - while not exactly touch-starved, he had always been restricted to Kenma and his mother, and the revelation that he could be touched more, no longer had to tuck his elbows and duck his head, was one that had shaken him greatly. Anger and resentment, a deep sadness, excitement. A hole he had not properly measured patched in slowly but never completely, a building site he couldn’t help but run his tongue over, pull at, poke and bite and watch in wonder as his lonely edges smoothed to something soft.

Kuroo mostly owes his thanks to Bokuto. They met by chance, living in completely different dorms and taking wildly dissimilar courses, but the bright eyed, human impersonation of sun had been the leading light in him becoming who he is today. And while he’s not the proudest of his identity, Bokuto had pushed him to a better, more stable place by virtue of his positivity and unconditional love. There isn’t a day that goes by where Kuroo can imagine his life without him; he gets him out of the bed in the mornings on most days, and while it possibly isn’t the healthiest solution, Kuroo is endlessly grateful to him.

Without Bokuto, Kuroo doesn’t know who he would be, and he is loathe to discover it.

“Hey, Kuroo, are you free at all now?” Suga asks, once they have cleared the hallway and walk side by side towards the university entrance and the last few shimmers of sunlight.

By habit, Kuroo reaches a hand up to fluff at the hair around his hidden ears, grasping the edge of his hoodie to pull it over to overshadow his face, “Nah, actually. Bo is ‘round my place tonight. Raincheck?”

“Oh no, just needed to grab something in town and wanted someone to bug,” Suga waves a hand in his direction, “Daichi works late tonight. Or well - I say work, I’m pretty sure he’s taking the team out for a meal, the big softy.” There isn’t a hint of resentment in Suga’s voice despite the words, and if Kuroo had to name the slight upturn of Suga’s lips at the speaking of Daichis name, he thinks he’d call it indulgence. Fondness. A drowning in a comfortable affection. The same he recognises in his own, again and again.

“They won their last game?” Kuroo asks politely.

“Lost, actually. But Daichi will treat them regardless, you know how he is.”

Kuroo has never met Daichi, but he supposes he may as well have with how often Suga regales him with tales of the man, mundane and funny alike. He seems to be steady and kind, with enough mischievousness in him to battle Suga’s own sharp humour. Kuroo thinks he’d very much like to meet him, one day.

“Hmm. It does sound like him.”

 

They continue to chat idly til Kuroo reaches the turn for his part of town and offers a friendly goodbye. Suga’s eyes catch the light eerily as they glow strangely pink, shifted for the muggy evening darkness which has began to fuzz at the edges of his vision. Kuroo suppresses his own, eyes firmly human as he guides by shop light windows to his flat. It’s located in a more traditional, aged part of the town, where clear signs of cat shifters lie - the lack of streetlamps being one notable one, particularly as his sessions run late to avoid working hours.

It tends to edge him towards a headache, and it’s a disarming enough pain he can’t quite hide his limp as he turns onto his street, relieved to spot the familiar signage of his mother’s shop.

In the window above, a tiny circle one crossed with an old design, light spills through into the evening air. Kuroo watches it hungrily as he approaches, tail twitching in anticipation where it is bound about his waist. It had been a longer day than he’d like to admit; Wednesdays were always due a midweek delivery in the early hours, and Kuroo had been woken up rather rudely after having overslept by a persistent knocking on his front window via shaky manifestation of a severed hand, formed from what looked like the dirt of Kuroo’s flowerbeds. The delivery service was annoyed enough to leave Kuroo with all the heavy lifting, begging off under the guise of lateness, leaving Kuroo with three boxes brimming with stacked herbs and a few order-in items at the doorway of his shop.

He wouldn’t consider himself weak, exactly, but he had still been sore from the night prior, magic waning, legs aching and threatening to reopen old wounds. It had been a little taxing to push them far enough inside not to obstruct customers but that had been about as far as he felt able to take them without completely relying on what little magic remained, and he couldn’t just bet on the fact no customers would need something custom charmed. It wasn’t a very usual occurrence but Kuroo felt ill at ease at the idea of being unprepared without even a glimmer of magic.

Which lead to him roping Kenma into helping him move two boxes between them. Something Kenma had apparently seen as his due for the day, curling up around the shop for the remainder and skulking away from customers in a typical feline fashion. If Kuroo needed extra hands around, Kenma would appear - and that’s all Kuroo needed to know.

The door is unlocked when he tries it, which isn’t the strangest thing but he hadn’t been expecting anyone but Bo round, and he’d learned to lock the door behind him pretty early on in Kuroo moving here. Pushing it open a little cautiously, he is greeted by the dim light of the counter light and, thankfully, the familiar figure of Iwaizumi propped against it, arms folded and ears perked towards him even as the rest of him is carefully angled away.

“Hello, Kuroo.”

“Hey Iwaizumi- Kenma’s around?” He greets back, eyeing the box he had yet to move this morning still innocently stacked against the left most display as he stows his keys away once more, “Actually, could you do me a favour?”

“They left his game in the lounge… you know. But sure, I’m free for a second, what’s up?”

“Could you carry this into the backroom? It’s too heavy for little old me.” Iwaizumi narrows his eyes a little, a clear distrust of Kuroo’s tone written over his face, and Kuroo can’t help but grin. “Oikawa is always saying how strong you are, _Iwa-chan_.” He pronounces the ending with a particular delight, lighting up as Iwaizumi visibly twitches.

“If,” he starts, pushing off from the counter, “You never say that word again, I will lift this.”

“What word?” Kuroo asks innocently, stepping aside and letting the door finally swing shut. Iwaizumi scowls deeply and bends to grab the box, knowing better to respond further. Kuroo pouts.

“Kuro, leave him alone.” Kenma chastises from the doorway to the backroom, PSP in hand, drowning in a sweatshirt that clearly isn’t theirs. Kuroo’s smile softens a bit at the edges, and he moves forward to bump his cheek against Kenma’s in a friendly greeting, his friend’s tail twining briefly up his back in search of Kuroo’s concealed one. It falls short, of course, but Kenma’s used to it enough they don’t even seem to notice their tail falling back down. They’re concentrated on their PSP, flicking through saves by the looks of it, and Kuroo feels oddly tender smoothing down their hair as Iwaizumi passes, eyes just as soft.

Kuroo guesses they’d been settling down for the evening when Kenma noticed the lack of their game, probably making Iwaizumi walk them the whole way while they stayed shifted, by the state of their undress. He doesn’t mind, really, Kuroo’s place has always been a second home to Kenma, a first home, even, for many years. He’s comfortable in the idea that Kenma feels free enough to use their key to the place to come and go at will, that his mother’s shop and the tiny flat above were central points to those close to him.

Kenma had always understood how terrified Kuroo was of being alone. How rooted he was in the company of others.

He doesn’t quite know how to thank him. He studies the dark roots his fingers have paused in, thinks about big gestures Kenma would never care for. Money. Games he would have had pre-ordered months ago, consoles Oikawa will have bought him pre-releases of… he had nothing material, but they’d never really needed it. He likes to think they feed into each other, though what he gives he isn’t quite sure of - but, quiet denials keep him sane. Kenma had never been the type to stick around with no reason.

“Class was good,” He tells Kenma aimlessly, moving his hand away from their hair. Kenma hums and knocks their forehead against Kuroo’s chest, game still pressed beneath them, apparently unwilling to talk much. Well, that’s fine.

“You cold in that?”

“Normal.” Kenma replies.

“Normal?”

“ _Kuro_ .” Kuroo smiles good naturedly, resisting the urge to bury his face in Kenma’s neck. He’s tired, and he’s happy his friend is here, but he desperately wants to lie down, and eat, and, _fuck,_ Bo -

He meets Iwaizumi eye as he emerges from the back room, dusting off his hands on his jeans, and an understanding is nodded between them.

“Kenma, you got everything?” He asks, coming to stand closer. Kenma turns against Kuroo, squinting a little where Iwaizumi stands framed by the backlight, the catish slant to their eyes exaggerated, “Yeah?”

In lieu of reply, Kenma’s ears flick in a way that Kuroo has grown horribly familiar with, and he has a split second to reach forward before Kenma abruptly shifts between them. Iwaizumi is there just as quickly, catching the suddenly unsupported PSP in one hand and the other between Kuroo’s two outstretched limbs, holding up what Kuroo can only assume is Kenma’s belly, hidden in the folds of their sweater.

“Kenma!” Iwaizumi exclaimed, looking mildly harassed.

“ _Please_ stop doing that.”

Kuroo passes the pile over to Iwaizumi’s arms. Two ears twitching through the neck opening at the reprimands, followed slowly by a painfully neutral expression set in a pale, furry face, unphased, as if they hadn’t given both of their companions a heart attack. It doesn’t matter how many times Kenma had pulled this very same trick on Kuroo as a child, it never fails to pull his fangs from his skull, elongate his claws from his nails - an instinct rising in Kuroo to _protect_ , even if there’s no discernible threat.

They’re light, as slender as a cat as they are human, and Iwaizumi receives them easily, cradling the bundle in one arm and tucking away the PSP. Kuroo subtly retracts the sharper points of his feline features in time for Iwaizumi to shoot him a look full of exasperation and a taxing fondness Kuroo can feel to the core.

It chokes a laugh from him, and Kenma’s ears flick in irritation, like they _know,_ despite having their face very firmly hidden away. Kuroo pulls his gaze away.

“You guys heading back, then? Bo should be up there, might be something for you guys to drink if you’re in the mood.” He gestures in the vague direction of his apartment, pushing a yawn back down his throat and stretching out to lean on the desk, mind lazily filling with the prospect of entertaining guests while being _this_ exhausted.

Thankfully, Iwaizumi smiles a little sheepishly.

“We’re good, thanks, Kuroo. Tooru ordered something so we should be getting back,“ He lifts Kenma up to his shoulder, where the cat stretches up to climb onto his shoulder in one fluid movement, jumper left behind to sag in Iwaizumi’s arms, “He won’t answer the door if we’re not in and I’m not losing my dumplings. Again. We’ll see you ‘round, though?”

“For sure,” Kuroo waves, “Thanks for the help. Stay safe you two.”

Kenma climbs into Iwaizumi’s hood as he leaves the shop, the end of his tail pouring out one side, crooked into a small loop that could almost be a heart. If Kuroo squints.

(He does.)

He locks up behind them, feeling the tiredness settle as if an old friend stopping by. Familiar, heavy at his shoulders, a gentle persuasion at his eyes to flutter closed. It is little helped when he pulls at his waning magic to cast a simple charm on the doorway to ward out lock-pickers and forced entry; not his best cast, but enough to rouse him, at least, in the event of someone breaking in. The shop’s walls and windows are well warded from years of castings, enforced and woven with his mother’s magic.

He’d feel her, the lingering remains, if he were to reach out. The gentle warmth of _cinis_ lasting long after her own life magic had spiraled and unwoven to redistribute elsewhere, to loose form as it had known her, to break apart from veins, neurons, a cast of all that had made his mother up. A morbid curiosity, one he had eased away into the tides that surround them all, another swell in the ebbing pull of magic that clustered beneath skin, filled the air between them, charged storm clouds and the core beneath their feet.

She had filled the air at his fingertips, once, cold flesh and a deep trembling, shaking, the dispelling of a magic he had never wanted to release. He could have kept her there forever. In the drops of his blood, in the smears his tears wrought upon her patterned palms. He could have curled around her and never let her go, the darkness he embodies a prison, a void, impenetrable to the strands of red that separated from her rotting, pooling blood.

Kuroo doesn’t know how he let her go. How he feels an impression of her everyday he steps out into the shop, how every ray of sunlight that pierces the windows is draped in her protection, how the air he breathes is charmed, alive in ways she has not been for years. How he does not choke on it, no matter how he longs to.

But he did let her go, and she is gone, and it is beyond him now.

The heaviness of it does not leave him.

This is not a bad day, he thinks, making his way up the stairs, this is a normal day, a day squeezed between two days of the same, and Kuroo knows not how long he has been drowning, a little at a time. He has nothing to measure what he feels inside against, no rulers or weights or references, only which that he feels, and he knows that, pound by pound and meter by meter, he is sinking. That, inside, where he at his worst, his darkness swirls low and swollen. Infection hot against his skin.

It leaves a bad taste in his mouth to consider. It feels, sometimes, as if he is not quite allowed the things he has, as if the rug is to pulled out from under his feet at any passing moment. And, he know he would deserve that. The other shoe dropping. It’s what people like him get in the end - call it karma, justice, but Kuroo knows well the equilibrium in the universe. There is a call for give where something is taken, and Kuroo _takes._ Drains.

Empties.

“Tetsu! Is that you?”

Kuroo snaps back, hand on the cold door handle and eyes re-focusing from a dream. The stairwell is dark, and his vision is blurry as the light spilling underneath the door swims into a hazy sort of focus. The smell of cooked food is strong in the doorway, but it is nothing compared to when he woodenly pushes the door the rest of the way open into the mini entryway and is swamped in the distinct and heavy scent of pork and broth.

And of course it’s pork, if Bokuto is cooking.

“Hey, Bo.” He calls out in greeting, dropping his bag on the chair packed tightly in the space between door and wall. He’s barely shrugged off his jacket when Bokuto rounds the corner, and certainly has no chance to catch what he’s wearing before Bokuto swoops him up in a hug. It’s perhaps too tight, but Kuroo can’t find it in himself to mind the shift of warm arms around him, the silk of feathers brushing against his arms. It’s comforting, a jolt to home, a spiritual grounding. He takes in a deep breath, resists the urge to close his eyes.

“You’re late, Tetsu!” It’s muffled in his shoulder, but equally as appalled as usual.

Kuroo smiles to himself, shifting Bokuto away so he can catch his eye, and reaches up to his face to brush at feathers shifted out of place among his unstyled hair.

“You heard us downstairs, don’t play dumb. It’s not cute,” Bokuto pouts, and something shifts into place deep in Kuroo’s chest.

It’s like this; Kuroo has been slipping into characters since he can remember. Kuroo is good at being a class clown to a class that hates him. Kuroo is good at being the life of the party, a provoker, a peace-keeper, whatever he needs to be. He can smooth down his feelings to a boiling lava - even, flowing, steady. A lake beneath a mountain, a thing which he can hide and deny below himself so that he become something more.

And it’s also like this; Kuroo knows how to slip into character, knows how to push away his feelings. But, when he is with Bokuto, he is less of a pretender and more of a method-actor. He doesn’t have to stow away what negativity he feels, for it slips away from him, parts from his consideration as he is caught up in the brilliance of Bokuto’s smile, the single minded affection of his focus. He doesn’t have to act like someone who is happy, who is in love, because he is very, very much that person.

(Kuroo takes, and he takes from Bokuto the most.)

“What’d you make?” he asks, though he already knows.

Bokuto beams, letting his hand fall to entangle in Kuroo’s to lead him towards the kitchen, “The recipe Akaashi sent me! From yesterday, ‘ya know - but it came out amazing, I think, at least when I tried some it tasted good. You need to try it too, Tetsu.”

He carries on, and Kuroo is happy just to listen and nod and smile, drowning himself in the calluses against his wrist and the soft canter to his voice that is just for _him_. The room is on the humid side from the steam, and Kuroo takes a moment to pop open a window as Bokuto chatters and starts to look for plates. They set up Kuroo’s tiny table together, shuffling magazines off the chairs and cleaning off cutlery (and if Bokuto notices that Kuroo hardly has anything clean, he doesn’t say anything) to squeeze onto the table alongside their food.

It’s a little too salty, but the pork is well cooked and the hook of Bokuto’s ankle across Kuroo’s calf makes up for anything else wrong with the meal. It’s sweet, sharing a warm dish after a long day in the flickering of ever constant candles and dimmed down ceiling lights. The sun had long since set, but the sky glows in a few remaining embers which spill onto the table between them like slices of flame.

Comforting, familiar.

Afterwards, Kuroo stacks their dishes in the sink and helps Bo stretch through his physiotherapy for his injured knee. Bokuto isn’t stupid, and it’s clear it hurts, and Kuroo is so, so happy to take hissed curses and nails dug into his arm if that’s what Bokuto needs. Most of the exercises are solo, and Kuroo soothes and encourages where he can. Bokuto is bad with knee injuries especially - he’s always had strong legs, good shock absorbers for his jump spikes, and he’s never had to give much care for his knees. So, Kuroo checks his back and leg posture carefully from the handout the coach give them, complete with Oikawa’s little emoji doodles acting as some kind of pain rating.

‧º·(˚ ˃̣̣̥⌓˂̣̣̥ )‧º·˚

Kuroo’s not even sure what that _means;_ but it does suspiciously resemble Oikawa’s crying face. And Bokuto’s moans _are_ pretty load.

(”I’m not gunna _cry_ , Tetsu-”

“Sure,”

“Tetsu, I’m not - oh my god, stop pulling that face. _Tetsu_ , _I’m not crying it’s sweat_.”)

Bokuto takes a shower. He suggests one together but Kuroo finds himself crashing hard on the couch, too exhausted to do more than follow him out of the room with his eyes and a sleazy smile Bo scoffs at. The sofa fabric is wiry, softened by time but still enough to irritate the delicate skin of his cheek. His lashes brush against it as his eyelids flicker shut.

Later, clean and warm, they settle in for the night together. Kuroo doesn’t even have to feign his tiredness, and Bokuto doesn’t try for intimacy. His hands fall warmly against a lick of exposed hip on Kuroo’s side, and Kuroo buries his face in Bokuto’s fluffy hair, blinking slowly at the moonlight creeping across his sheets. It’s these moments, a little slow, a little sincere, that are a balm to his aching bones.

He drifts off quietly.


	2. always talk down on yourself whenever possible

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no beta from this point on

A morning with Bokuto is always a good one.

His mood is light and feathery as he runs a watering can under the tap. The shop isn’t open yet - Friday is a late opening and had been so since his mother owned the shop. There are shifters who prefer to do their business at night, and it’s fairly common in this district to dedicate some working days to midnight customers. This particular friday is decently far from any significant star happenings, and Kuroo doesn’t expect it to be busy.

The extra two hours by Bokuto’s side, fussing with each others hair and smiling over coffee had been a nice bonus, so Kuroo doesn’t mind the late night.

This morning is pale, clouds draped at the edges of the sun. It filters harshly through the glass of the greenhouse, and Kuroo finds his eyes narrowing as he crouches down to tend to the lowest plants. These shelf just below the surrounding brick wall of his neighbours roof - a lucky agreement he had reached with the charity shop next door in exchange for minor curse removals and more mundane spells on their menagerie of donated paraphernalia. Here, these plants avoid the majority of the light, and their leaves range from deathly pale to an inky dark. He’s careful to avoid their leaves as he measures out water into their waiting pots.Some plants are best left untouched til they are ready to be trimmed or harvested, the pH of his skin disagreeable with more sensitive varieties.

Nothing in his shop or greenhouse is dangerous. Well - on its own. He won’t pretend there’s more malicious uses for some raw ingredients he sells, but there is little that does not have multiple purposes, both good and bad. Kuroo refuses to sell anything that has very little practical use outside of poison and curses - the blood of particular reptiles, for example. Some of the local Avery community remain far from pleased with this, it being something his mother stocked on a request-only basis, but Kuroo wouldn’t host anything till he knows it’s intended use, and they are stonily silent on their traditions. 

Ravens are secretive, and Suga had only looked amused when Kuroo asked. 

_ Ravens and Crows are not one and the same. _

That much he could have guessed.

He waters the rest of the greenhouse peacefully, listening to the talk of people passing by two floors below and the general buzz from the main market three streets down. The greenhouse lends to create a dreamlike quality around him, leaves staining light greens and blues, flowers filling the air with a pollen so heavy he feels dizzy. It’s pleasant, it's haziness reminiscent of some of Kuroo’s less than healthy habits as a teenager. 

Sighing and reaching down for the compost bin, he redirects his thoughts back to Bokuto’s messy hair this morning, the glassy tenderness to his eyes as he blinked away sleep. 

It’s ridiculously easy to sink into those eyes.

Kenma huffs the moment Kuroo enters the backroom and frees the fire door, leant over a table covered in herbs and strings.

“What?”

“That smile makes you look dopey.” They tell him matter-of-factly, slim fingers slipping under a row of string to untangle it from the one below. It’s coarse, hand-made from plant fibers they stock, but Kuroo loves the warm colour to it. Making it reminds him, like most things in the shop, of time spent at his mother's side. Twining fibres around each other - brittle, thin things - into strong ropes Kuroo could pull to his heart's content without a fray. There’s a metaphor there, he’s sure.

“I feel a bit dopey too, kitten.” Kuroo tells them with a short laugh, ruffling their hair on his way past to the staircase. From his passing angle, he spies a fox curled up comfortably at the blonde's side, jaw resting on their lap and fur looking finely combed. Unmistakably Oikawa, though his scent is negligible through the heavy mint bushels stocked besides him.

He props open the door with a stone figure and has his leg on the first step when he hears Kenma’s faint reply from behind him, more whispered than muttered but intended for him to hear -

“... it’s nice.”

He smiles.

It’s later that day when he steps out into the street for his evening lectures. 

Kenma’s presence is made known at his shoulder via slight brushes of whiskers against his neck. It’s clouded over throughout the day, and there’s the suggestion of coldness biting at the slice of ankle exposed by cuffed jeans. Kenma seems to feel it too, if the way they duck deeper into his hood is any indication. Nights have grown closer with autumn, and it seems especially notable today as the the streets hang strangely darkened, too early for streetlights but still shrouded from the sun.

It settles as something uncomfortable in Kuroo’s stomach. There’s a vulnerability to cloud light; it sticks to shadows eerily, evokes dreary qualities to colourful signs and coats something apathetic to people’s features. Each face he passes seems gloomy, accusing, like the brief meeting of eyes as he crosses a street or rounds a corner is a glaring, boring gaze to his bone. His ears, in their smallest shift and hidden amongst the nest of his hair, twitch uneasily - unnoticeable, but Kuroo still feels abruptly exposed. Something sharp crawls up the back of his throat, forces blood to his heart, sweat to his palms. He keeps his eyes fixed to the ground, breathes evenly, bites hard at his tongue.

The heavy weight of Kenma against his back is comforting, solid and warm and  _ present _ , but part of him itches to pull up his hood, tuck away his hands, slouch so that his tail can pool away from the tight fitting lines of his jeans. 

Hide away.

In an effort to pull himself away, he takes out his phone to slide back and forth through open apps in an attempt to look busy. He curses himself for leaving his pack at home - smoking always gave him something to do with his hands, but he supposed Kenma may not have been the most appreciative of it. . There’s a text waiting from Bokuto about their plans for tomorrow, and Kuroo gratefully buries himself into the distraction as he weaves through the overcast streets.

It seems to take forever to arrive at the coffee shop. Nothing about this morning indicated to him a bad day, but few things ever do. He scrambles to grasp at the receding edges of this mornings good mood to paint a smile on his face for Suga, pushes away the grey evening in favour of the warmth of a fresh brew, condensation slick on his phone screen.    
  
The shop is far from a picturesque or quaint, but it’s well staffed and has enough tables and booths for its near constant influx of tired students. It’s a familiar scene, one which Suga blends in well with - rosy cheeked from the heat of his drink and hunched at his laptop, his hair taking on a brighter quality in the white light cast by the skies which glows a pleasing gold on the side catching the artificial light above. He doesn’t seem to notice Kuroo’s entry, so Kuroo takes the time to order a drink from the flustered looking barista he vaguely recognises from around campus. Kenma doesn’t stir throughout, but Kuroo makes sure to ask for a cup of water for his companion.

Service is quick, and Kuroo thanks them with what he hopes isn’t a fake looking smile before approaching Suga’s table.

“Evenin’.”

“Kuroo, hey,” Suga flashes a grin, then double takes at the sight of the furry tail draped down Kuroo’s shoulder, “And who is this beautiful specimen?”

“They’re not one of your experiments, Suga.” Kuroo scolds, shrugging off his outer coat and turning to carefully extract a sleepy - suddenly very heavy - Kenma. 

“I didn’t mean it like that and you  _ know _ it,” Kenma sinks into Kuroo’s lap without once opening their eyes, tucking their head into the side of his sternum and effectively shielding themselves from Suga’s curious gaze. 

Suga, for his part, huffs good naturedly.

“So? Who’s your friend? Don’t leave me hanging.”

Kuroo absentmindedly sips his coffee, “This is Kenma, from the shop - ah, fuck, that’s hot - they work with me.” He hastily places the cup back down and reaches for Kenma’s water for his searing tongue. He’s definitely not thinking today.

“It’s coffee, it’s hot.” Suga states, finally turning back to his laptop, “And they’re a feline shifter, huh?”

Kuroo narrows his eyes, not liking where this was going, “Yeah…”

“You know Kuroo-san, I always thought there was something…” He pauses, grins slyly at his screen before glancing back up, “...cat-like, about you.”

Kenma presses their head firmer against his side.

“ _ Suga, _ come on. _ ”  _ Groans Kuroo, fussing with the fur on Kenma’s back to hide a tremble working its way from his knuckle-bones. Suga doesn’t know - but the dryness in his throat is back, itching and tempting at that tidal wave of blackness skirting at his edges.

“Small ears? A big bushy tail? You’d be a mainecoon right? Or something slender? I don’t know cat breeds very well. We don’t usually mix.”

“You see a big bushy tail? Ears?” Kuroo asks, cocking his eyebrow at Suga’s crinkled nose.

Suga snorts, “You could have horns under that mess you call hair and no one would know.”

“You got styling tips for me?” He grins wildly, moves his head to the side in a faux model pose and tries to calm down his heartbeat. It’s stupid - Suga is a crow, a bird shifter who by all rights would have no impression of feline culture. Kuroo could safely tell him he’s a dark cat shift, and Suga wouldn’t understand the significance of his stiff ears or long tail. He wouldn’t look close enough to see the print seeping through his dark fur, Kuroo wouldn’t  _ let  _ him, and it’s highly unlikely Suga would ask other felines friends - if he has them. Kuroo has never scented any on him, and if Suga had any… unless they were foreign , they’d have warned him off Suga from the start.

A black cat shift in these parts more often than not points back to him. 

Suga could be pretending not to know, asking Kuroo a courtesy of friendship.

He feels a little sick at the idea. 

Something sharp sinks into the tender flesh of his thighs.

“Fuck!” He startles from his train of thought, almost knocking over his drink and glances down to meet a pair of golden eyes, “Ow - Kenma, what the hell?” His friends paw is very deliberately sunk at a strange angle into Kuroo’s leg, directly above his latest damage and out of Kenma’s comfortable sitting range.

Of course. They could smell the blood.

They withdraw and begin to lick the fur around the offending claws, a small, trilling purr starting up in their chest as Kuroo stares, his chest a mess of surprised and strangely touched.

“I like them, Kuroo. Why didn’t you introduce us sooner?”

Suga, naturally, loves Kuroo’s suffering.

They continue in a much calmer vein for the rest of the wait til their lecture. Suga loses interest in discussing Kuroo’s possible species, and they move to their notes from last week's topic, swapping points they missed and ironing out any details misunderstood. It’s been invaluable to have a partner in the class - Kuroo loves to apply himself to things he’s passionate about, and he’s always been good in traditional education, but he learns best by explaining to others, and having others explain to him in multiple different ways. As much as he’s thankful to be accepted this far in his application, the bulk of it is based around a lecture series that is two hours thrice a week. It requires more than attendance from him.

It’s nothing compared to his degree, but with full work hours on top it’s sometimes enough to overwhelm - if he thinks about it. Which he tries not to.

 

* * *

 

He’s alone when he arrives home. The shop is dark and empty, and it doesn’t sit right in Kuroo’s head. Bokuto is spending the evening with his team, Kenma with their partners. Sometimes, his social circle seems too big - sometimes too small. He is tied up in friends who are better tied to others. It’s not a phenomenon he is unused to.

_ Kenma and Bokuto love me _ .

Still. He lights a cigarette instead of making dinner and leans out the rusted window frame overlooking the rooftop of a neighbouring shop. There’s two metal framed chairs they pinch in the summer to eat outside scattered on its flat surface, dripping slowly from the light rain earlier. The air remains damp, cold, and Kuroo pulls his sleeves over his knuckles, struggles to readjust his numbing fingers around his cigarette.

They’re quitting smoking - officially - Bokuto and Kuroo together. It gets difficult to find enough things to distract himself, and he finds there are few methods subtle enough to quell his self destructive streak without raising alarm. When he smokes socially, it isn’t the same. Alone, there’s a different, new weight to the habit he often doesn’t acknowledge. It’s a cliche, or something a teenage him would have delighted in - but it’s there. A wick of satisfaction at a small rebellion, the urge to make bad things  _ worse _ . When he sneaks them between promises to stop they feel all the more pathetic.

He’s glad, in a secretive way, that owls have an infamously bad sense of smell. Kuroo always knows when Bokuto can’t help it, if not by his always forth-coming admissions then by the distinct smoke-and-ash smell that hugs to feathers. But beyond cologne or incense, Bokuto would never be able to tell on Kuroo, and it is oh-so-hard to be truthful. Kuroo doesn’t know how not to lie, not always.

Not for the first time, Kuroo knows Bokuto deserves someone better.

He doesn’t put out his cigarette. He smokes it to a desperate filter, scrapes black ash under his nails and scorches his fingertips. It’s pathetic. His hands shake.

* * *

 

 

As predicted, the night is slow.

Kuroo fills his tiredness the best he can. He sketches out the curl of a plants leaves again and again next to their latin names, their traditional uses, their magically imbued purposes. There’s a difference - the reason he is aspiring for a license in the first place. Some nit-picking legal checkpoint where Kuroo can sell certain magic services, and sell herbs and plants, but cannot imbue plants to sell or carry it out as a service. 

He wishes he could have learnt it from his mother, at intended.

The bell at the door trills quietly, and Kuroo only glances up long enough to catch site of a tabby’s trailing tail before looking back down. He hopes Bokuto is having fun tonight. Socialising has been difficult for him, his moods plunging more often than not when he sees his team lamenting on practices and games he struggles to attend - it drives home how little of his interaction with them is not volleyball related, Kuroo suspects. 

Bokuto is prone to bouts of worthlessness. He takes such a great pride in his body, his performance, it is little wonder his self image has taken a dip. Tonight should be a chance for him to remember his place in the lives of others. Kuroo is happy for that, though it is sometimes a comfort to know he is waiting for him just upstairs.

“Excuse me?”

His thoughts are interrupted by a shorter woman dressed very proper standing before the counter, her shoulders squared and her hands anxious at her purse.

“Ah - hello, can I help you?”  Kuroo greets somewhat awkwardly, caught-out and fighting the urge to fix his undoubtedly tuffled hair.

“Do you have any Lapis Lupaz in stock?” She asks, “I didn't see any out by the gems, and it is really quite urgent” She speaks fast, the ears on her head flicking back and forth with the sounds of the bat descendents behind her, rifling through stacks of dried herbs stacked within a basket.

“For kits?” He checks, bending down to the pull draws beneath his work surface with a click of his knees.

“Yes.” 

He scans the yellowing labels labels, tapping the edge of his fingernails on the metal decorating the outside. Lapis Lupaz is often used by to imbue their first drink - to bless prosperity and safety upon them, as well as traditionally, a kind magic and gentle shift. It is added to their drink or the milk is filtered through a collection of smaller stones and muslin cloth for non obstructive suckling. Kuroos’ own family had chosen amber, favoured in fire bloodlines.

The shelf isn’t dusty per say, but it is not an oft requested stone due to the increasing rarity of feline customers. He pulls the tray out and slides it onto the counter, over his notebook and stock log. The ring of the bell alerts him to the exit of the bat customers, the store’s charms a warmth against his cheek ensuring him of nothing amiss.

“I recommend the smaller ones, if you have no preference.” he offers casually as the older lady runs a careful claw through his stock, separating rocks and touching the soft skin of her finger tips to smooth edges. They are generic quality, lined with white calcite and smoothed by riverbeds under the influence of magic wielders. Their gold markings are more alike to a smattering of sand than any defined formations, but there is little definition for the quality of these in their use. Only in jewellery, Kuroo supposes. They shine prettily all the same, despite their imperfections.

She doesn’t respond straight away, but makes quick work of a selection, testing the weight of one of the bigger stones in her hand, “Not in our family.” She comments finally, offering it towards him to examine, “How much would this be?”

“¥600.”

She brings her purse forward to rest on the counter, and Kuroo straightens up to reach for the portable til just beyond his notes, momentarily passing from the illumination of the dim desk lighting. She freezes instantly, so quick Kuroo has to blink fast to check he’s not imagining it. 

She stares straight into his eyes, and Kuroo experiences that sinking feeling that echoes in his chest moments before lightning strikes.

In darkness, a predators eyes slim to a dot.

“ _ You. _ ”

She drops her purchase and her hands fumble for her purse but uselessly claw at the handles before releasing completely; it sags open on the counter as she turns and struggles to the door, one hand pushed against her chest as if to contain a great racing. Her tail sways back and forth and her ears are cocked and straining to focus on Kuroo - waiting, movement, perusal. Kuroo’s hands are stagnant on the metal of the til, his teeth suddenly too sharp in his mouth, too large to contain. Copper plays at his tongue.

The door slams shut - she is whispering to herself wards of protecting, the word monster tumbling from between her lips as she makes her way down the street - he can hear her heartbeat, a panicked backdrop to the roar of static eating at the edges of his ears.

Something wells up his throat, and crashes the next moment. He feels -

Nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, sorry for the wait all 5 of you reading this. Hope you enjoy!


	3. allow yourself to lose interest in the things you love

Kuroo is more dark, than not.

Cut and bleeding, a lonely ritual between his mother and father. A void oozes up from the break in his life line, presses out in his father’s grip into the offering hands of a statue below. The cupped palms of bronze glow, his blood rots to a sickly black, and a ribbon is tied around his hand. This is a conformation, not a celebration; his fur grows in black, his canines so sharp they cut his lips every time frustration rises up – there is magic inside him, dark and potent enough to twist his shift into something monstrous. This is the last time his father touches him, trembling and exorcising, and Kuroo doesn’t look back at this moment.

(There were no candles. Kuroo had been to many ceremonies of this kind, had witnessed family and neighbours bleed into statues and jewels, has seen rainbows overflow from imbued palms and atop glimmering surfaces. There are always candles. Not only that, there is always food and incense and the warm wind of tails against one another, laughing and purrs and colourful bracelets hung around wrists. His kin celebrate this wildly, arrogantly; embrace the eve of their magical persuasions wholeheartedly and without reservations. Kuroo spills out on the kitchen counter, the only light yellow and prying from the ceiling above – they eat dinner earlier, and afterwards his parents argue for hours.

When he removes the ribbon, alone in his room, the scab is achingly black.)

He doesn’t.

He guides the dead, touches cold hands and smooths fragrant oils over decaying skin. Kids at school won’t play with him, teachers drop his work onto tables, flinch in terrible, tiny movements if he makes to take it from them bodily. There’s a zone around him, an invisible area of _don’t touch_ that was erected long before Kuroo could understand it. Long before he could reach out to prove otherwise. He exists separately from the others, as if they’re afraid he’ll take them before their time – as if Kuroo, small and weak, eight years old, could possibly hurt them. It buries something bitter in the fallow plains of his chest.

He grows into his shift in ways that leave those last few close childhood friends scampering. The soft curve of his mothers ears are lost to a predatory sharpness, long and pointed and oddly still. Controlled, his mother says, _dead_ , his peers say. They refuse to bow down in submission, in fear, but can angle strangely backwards to capture sound behind him - it’s eerie, when he catches it in the mirror. It shouldn’t be possible without a full shift.

It’s helpful, if helpful is too hear with a unerring accuracy exactly what those he passes have to say. Helpful, if helpful is to never give an indicator on how he feels. He takes these things as blessings, later on, a way to stay detached. Powerful. As a child, it’s only a fraction more devastating than everything else, when his parents can’t read his moods, when he can cry and bleed and shake and still feel his ears only halfway lowered. Like he’s anxious, not suicidal. Like he heard a loud noise.

He has to wonder if he’s feeling _anything_ , then.

Because he’s more dark than not, and it’s undercurrents. Deep river running far beneath the earth’s crust, ancient tunnels carved from drops and tears and waterfalls, hallowed passages lost in the blurry nowhere between surface and core. Bone dust and minerals, thick oils, sand so fine and cold soft skin, preserved in stale air. There are glimpses in caves and oceans, oozing water from flesh wounds which, among the plasma, carry with it shivers from far below, a chilled unrest palatable only under the sting of salt and iron.

This is where he finds it again within himself, years later. A place just out of reach of his nails, further even than his claws dream to tear through. Somewhere so dark he must bleed for hours to feel it slipping from him, and even in that instances only ever in the tiniest slivers. As if, somewhere between his split veins and his heart, it has slipped away through thin membrane to bury deep within lymph nodes, nestle beneath organs. It matters not how many layers he tears through reaching within, how much blood is spilt down his thighs, how much he shakes and shivers and sweats, pale and determined on the bathroom floor.

It doesn’t matter, because he can’t ever carve it out.

(Because it’s part of him. Protected alongside marrow, integrated in every blood cells sense of self. Integral to his functioning. The bitterness beneath his teeth, the sourness on his tongue.

Here, fingertips red, warmth dripping to pool sluggishly in his palm, between his knuckles in ruddy ribbons; here is where he stops. And he asks himself;

_What am I trying to kill, really?)_

* * *

On the mornings he awakens, sore and badly stitched together like the ghost of a family heirloom, Kenma is there.

This is no exception.

Today, they are stretched out along Kuroo’s chest, head rested on two paws and bottom half splayed to the side, white stomach visible. It’s their favourite way to lie, and something Kuroo has become over familiar with across the years of Kenma-style comfort. Kenma prefers their cat form to all else, and it’s a constant point of contention that they refuses to buy most furniture when they can ‘ _sleep in my shift, thank you very much_ ’; and, in all fairness, it is a very nice shift. Long haired and lithe, with a rare fur pattern.

Kuroo reaches out, and boops their nose. 

Instantly, Kenma’s entire face scrunches back, and one eye opens to regard him balefully in the dim light, elegant features twisted in disgust. Despite it all, a smirk pulls at Kuroo’s mouth.

“Mornin’, kitten.”

Kenma closes their eyes, and pointedly snuggles their muzzle back into their paws. It’s cute, but their presence alone prompts Kuroo to take the distraction while it’s fresh and get dressed before his emotions can really sink in. That creeping dark.

“Come on, I gotta get up,” Kuroo sinks his hand into the fur on Kenma’s back, wonderfully silky, and amber eyes flutter open again into a narrowed expression of feline annoyance. With a few more words of encouragement (and maybe a threat or two pertaining to the well being of a certain PSP charger), the lazy cat rolls off the side of Kuroo’s chest and sprawls against the bed sheets to his side, taking some small vengeance in the white stray furs appearing on Kuroo’s grey sheets.

Kuroo takes the opportunity to sit up, running his hand through his hair and trying his best not to immediately dig his nails into the itch of healing skin tingling against his thighs. It’s a little easier with Kenma there, quiet and watchful, keeping him from slumping back into his bed and hiding from the world - a strange use for a cat’s uncanny ability to take up all remaining space on human sized furniture, but one he is thankful for. He must have opened the curtains before shifting, because a sunless dawn sky is visible in blotches of blue and pink. It must be early. Maybe he was having a nightmare.

The shadows under his eyes ache physically, and he tries to ignore that heaviness as he gathers up an outfit from a wardrobe. He wishes he didn’t have to look at himself in the mornings, could be one of those people that cruised by mirrors and regimes and knew they looked the same, presentable. But he isn’t. He confronts himself each day - his black eyes, predatory features. A darkened messiness he hates, something stolen from his mother, something morphed in blood. 

Kenma sneezes pointedly on the bed. Kuroo remembers where he is.

After pulling on a turtle neck, he pushes into the bathroom and sets his eyes grimly on his features. Kuroo’s too used to his face to antagonize over it especially, but as he’d suspected, his fangs had protruded in the night and bitten into his lower lip. That’d be why his mouth tastes like blood - he’d thought, maybe, it was just scent overwhelming his senses as usual. He’s a increment paler from blood loss, and the darkness under his eyes makes him look a little more dangerous than he prefers to -

Than his clients prefer him to.

But it could be worse. It _has_ been worse.

He fixes his face quietly in front of the sink, washing diluted blood from his lips in tainted water, scrubbing some redness into his cheeks. Artfully arranges his hair to hide his ears. Dresses up like a person, not a monster. Now he’s aware of it, his lip feels swollen, sore to his tongues prodding. Wryly, he hopes it will heal before he opens up. 

Though, maybe not, with his magic busy elsewhere.

The moment he peels back the bandages is the moment Kenma pads into the room. They’re in human shift now, dressed in clothes they must have left behind on another occasion - crumpled but cosy. They look suitably unimpressed with Kuroos (purposely unsuccessful) attempt at cleaning his wounds the night prior, and shoos away his hands from the cuts without a sound. Kuroo settles himself down on the edge of the bath, wrappings falling to the wooden panels beneath as they unwind from ugly, raw skin.

Overnight, the evidence of his internal excavation had, for the most part, healed over. The flesh is a swollen pink, scabs forming at the edges of the gaping incisions in fresh shades of burgundy. They bleed freely when Kenma scrubs over them, their face smoothed back to an impasse as they work; clearing the wound, blotting disinfectant into the lesions with tenderness that still wrings a gasp and bleeding palms out of Kuroo. Kenma whacks his hand gently at the new cuts, and Kuroo relinquishes his claws. There's grotesque evidence of his wrongness right in front of him, dug into partners so obviously matching his shifted claws, paws. If he hooked his fingers, they'd fit into the gorges, if he scratched and squeezed and pinched, they'd be as red as his blood should be. Should have always been.

Kuroo wants to feel guilty. He mostly feels nothing.

When Kenma finishes re-wrapping his thighs, he shifts between Kuroo’s legs slowly, and presses their foreheads together, eyes flickering closed in something that might be pain.

They wait out the sunrise together.

* * *

He’s a little bit tender later, restocking the shelves in his mothers old store. Soft moments with Kenma remind him, in a fiercely nostalgic light, of his teenage years. Of his mother, ushering them to sleep at the early hours when Kenma’s gaming kept them up, of them cooking together, of the fond looks his mother would give them when she discovered them curled up together in their oddly sized cat forms. She’d always been so happy he met Kenma, his first friend after presenting, a second son to her. 

He wasn’t the only one who lost her.

Sighing a little, he presses his head to the shelf of dried herbs, soothing his thoughts with the cool of the wood. It wasn’t necessarily a bad day, but maybe an empty one. His thighs still hurt, and the way shadows pool in his palms make him occasionally double-take, adrenaline crashing like a slow wave. The flickering of candle in this section only adds to a scene that is numbingly familiar.

The door creaks open, Kuroo moves away from his slumb, smooths out his shirt, tries to look busy for the customer. A drift of familiar scent hits him before his voice does, and he’s relaxing before he can fully tense.

“Kuroo? Hey where are - Kuroo!” Bokuto perks up the moment he sees him emerge from between the shelves, and something lights up tight in his chest at the way his whole face breaks out in smile, reforms into something new - just for him. Kuroo doesn’t know what to _do_ with all that attention. Never learned what it’s like to command this much energy.

“Kou, hey.” And Bokuto is already across the shop before he finished speaking, pulling him in a tight hug that smells strongly of crushed pine needles from an air freshener and undercurrents of Akaashi and coffee. Kuroo could die happy here. A little piece of him really wants to.

“What are you doing here, huh?” He asks fondly, instead.

“I’m on my lunch break! And I wanted to see you! Akaashi said I shouldn’t bother you while you’re working, but I really wanted to see you, and it’s not that far from the shop, oh and I saw a bakery on the way and they sold those shortcakes you like - shaped like a cat? But I bought some like an owl, like me. I thought we could share?” He pulls pack, arms still looped around Kuroo’s as he refuses to take a breath, and well - Kuroo can’t say no.

“Yeah, Bo, I’d love that. Kenma’s back there today. I’ll close up a sec, okay?” He runs a hand down Bokuto’s arm, skims across his bracelet, reassures himself the skin and feathers beneath his hands is real. He doesn’t look for the shadows he leaves behind. Bokuto practically vibrates beneath his finger tips.

“Okay!” Bokuto kisses his cheek, and dances around him to the back, calling out Kenma’s name and disappearing from the shop floor in a wash of energy that has his tail feather ruffling as if winded.

Kuroo can picture Kenma’s expression perfectly, and he snorts to himself as he swings over the closed sign, rubbing his cheeks after to scrub away the blush staining beneath his cheekbones. Bokuto does stuff like that, kissing and hugging and giving, like it’s second nature. An extension of himself. It makes Kuroo feel so fragile, a little like ruined goods - it’s hard for him, trusting enough to reach that level of open affection. It’d been years of being kits with Kenma to adjust to grooming, snuggling, the easy physicality they have now hard earned and reinforced again and again. But Bokuto had been sugary warm from the beginning, spilling light and honey in every manic eyed smile and soft glances in between. A barrier in Kuroo has snapped, somewhere in this timeline, and occasionally it’s like an open blister, others, like the best kind of embrace.

He can’t quite wipe away his grin venturing into the backroom, and Kenma shoots him an annoyed but knowing look as Kuroo settles down on the sofa next to Bokuto, brushing their thighs together affectionately. It’s something small, but worth the way Bokuto reaches out to him to squeeze his thigh, how he seems to lean towards him like a flower to the sun.

(He only flinches a little at the tiny prick of talons through his jeans, but Bokuto has a strange look - caught somewhere between a smile and a curious quirk - that tells Kuroo he saw.

Sometimes, not always, Bokuto understands the quiet things.)

Bokuto brings out the shortcake and Kuroo eats his with one hand cupped underneath, which does nothing to slow the descent of crumbs into his lap. No one says a word about the questionable nature of their lunch, and Kuroo’s happy to let it pass as long as Bokuto stays pressed up to him like this, dropping his own crumbs all over Kuroo’s lap and not even trying for damage control. It’s sweet, it’s nice, and Kuroo can laugh without it echoing horribly empty between his ribs.

Even when Bokuto leaves in a mad dash, insisting he’s late but still taking a sickeningly long time to pull Kuroo close with reassuring words on tonight's plans, Kuroo can’t feel cold. The thoughts cross his mind as usual, that he shouldn’t touch Bokuto, that he shouldn’t waste his time, that he’s not worthy of all that attention; they’re still there, but they slip too easily from his mind, won’t let him brood on them. Oil and water. It's an odd sensation, temporary badness, one he's ill accustomed too.

It’s scary, in a way, because he’s always been the type to brood. He’s not sure where his personality ends and his depression begins, and he wonders at what else he thought permanent he might lose to a brief happiness. What’s left of him when he’s with Bokuto is over idealised, things that won’t filter out in the sunlight. He’s left worrying who he is, when he isn’t sad. If he’s just a bundle of nerves frizzing out and shining with Bokuto’s touch. If he’s shallower, where it’s fairer.

(He hopes that Bokuto will still love him when he doesn’t light up at every touch. Will still love him when he can’t smile away the clouds. He doubts.)

Kuroo opens the blinds in front window of the shop, and Kenma naps there through his work shift, stretched out peacefully in the afternoon glow.

* * *

Dawn paints the sky in nauseating reds, too bloody and dirty when cast against the remaining white of dream like clouds. Where his sleeves ride up, his skin is painted _red, red, red,_ and it’s all he can think about as he walks to Bokuto’s work, leg throbbing steadily beneath his weight.

It’s an empty day, or maybe a bad one.

He wonders if he should cancel on Bokuto. Preserve himself longer in his eyes. He thinks it right up to the turning corner of the street and beyond, knowing in his hearts of hearts he can’t resist spending time with Bokuto - not because it’d let him down, but because Kuroo is selfish, Kuroo is greedy, and Kuroo wants that warmth just a moment longer. He can’t make himself let go, not when there’s so little inside.

Whatever wheezing mess he can muster today rises up in his chest as he nears the shop front, spots Bokuto sitting on a bike rack and shifting round, ill at ease with staying stationary for long periods of time. He’s never been good at waiting. Kuroo is a bit too much in love with the way the sun hits from behind, throws up this ridiculous halo effect he’s only seen in movies.

If this was a movie, Bokuto would spot him and wave, would take his hand and smile. They’d go out for Italian, and they’d walk up some kind of river, or maybe a market, and kiss underneath one of those lampposts that lights up a touch slower than the others, eludes something fuzzy and syrupy.

But it’s not a movie, and Bokuto is fiddling with his hair and simultaneously trying to tangle his leg around a metal pole, teeth gritted strangely in determination as his tail feathers catch between his legs. He almost doesn’t want to interrupt him, but he snorts before he can help himself, and suddenly there’s two suns competing to white out his vision.

“Tetsu, hey! I was waiting!” His face is only just visible against the glare behind him.and Kuroo is sure he looks terrible with his face all screwed up like this against the sun, trying to make out Bokuto’s eyes, but he can’t bring himself too care all that much as the hollow in his chest starts to brim up with a stupid brand adoration.

“I missed you, Bo.” He tells him sincerely, dumbly, and squishes his cheeks together in an ugly smash that Bokuto still manages to grin through.

“Oh. Oh, Tetsu, I missed you, too.” He informs him smartly through scrunched lips, and Kuroo lets his face go fondly, catching an affectionate enthusiasm in his partners eyes,“Akaashi said it wasn’t a good idea to have my phone on the shift, but I wanted to text you - a woman came in, and her ears were _exactly_ like that guys from Aoba Seijou - you know with the?” He gestures to his hair.

“Oikawa?”

“No! He was small,”

“Iwaizumi?”

“Yeah! And it reminded me of our first university match, and I was telling Akaashi but I couldn’t remember the other teams there, and I knew that you would know because you’re good with stuff like that, I _really_...”

Kuroo laces their hands together, pressed his scar to Bokuto smooth palm and loses himself in between Bokuto’s words as they traverse the streets to his apartment. They stop to order take out at a udon bar, and the bags keep their free hands warms as dawn fades out from the sky and into a chalky black. The night isn’t all that cold at this time of year, but it’s enough that Kuroo’s instincts are niggling at him to shift out some fur, cover his naked skin.

But he’s warm enough with his coat and Bo at his side, the reluctance sinking heavily to the seat of his abdomen having nothing to do with the particular deathly shade of his furskin, the way it’s shadowy contours blend too seamlessly to the darkness of alleys, crevasses. The kind that haunts restless dreams, seeps from his arteries. Around his waist, he tucks his tail tighter, can't hep but glance around for any other cat shifters; they all know him well. The one who sends off their dead. Preserves them to their ancestors, speaks with their elderly of fading traditions - respected, hated, feared. As if death dogs his steps, like shades in his fur are the veils to the next life. He's never done anything wrong but exist. 

He thinks that may have been his first mistake.

Entering Bokuto’s apartment, he attempts to clear his mind of the lingering cold, focus instead on the peppered black and white of Bokuto’s feathers, revealed garment by garment as Bokuto rids himself of outdoor wear, reaching for lounging clothes strewn about in his room.

Kuroo declines a change of clothes, all too aware of the swollen aching mess of his thighs; something that should have healed by now. On bad days, he doesn't know where his energy goes, but it seems to fade him at the edges, dissipate the tips of his fingers and wisps of his hair into negative space. His magic becomes slow, clotted blood, sticky and dark filling in his cracking seams like a gorey glue.

He keeps busy waiting for Bo by opening the tops of containers on the suspiciously stained coffee table besides a second hand sofa they’d dragged up three stories just to avoid the moving fee, Bokuto keeping his wings out to balance the ridiculous weight on the staircase. It’s a light memory, fluffy and full of Bokuto’s loud, raucous laughter, and it forces Kuroo to smile to himself, despite the clouds fogging his brain.

“Oh, that’s pretty.” He hears from where Bokuto stands in the doorway to his room, hair messed up from pulling on a shirt and staring straight at Kuroo.

“Hmm?”

“Ah, Kuroo! You’re so pretty!” Bokuto repeats, coming forward with a playful smile on his face.

“Nonsense! If I’m anything, it’s devilish handsome, a slick charmer, a man who -”

“Yeah, yeah,” Bokuto talks over him fondly, falling down on the couch and leaning forward to touch at Kuroos hips with the edges of his palms, "But I want cuddles with my pretty boyfriend, not anyone else.”

Kuroo covers his mouth with his hand, feighing surprise, stupid and giddy with their banter all at once.

“You have another boyfriend!?”

Bokuto just whines, pulling on his hips to make him come forward. Kuroo can’t help but laugh, swaying with his hands and straddling him on the sofa edge, settling down over his thighs with a toothy grin. It's easy to ignore the draw of denim against scabs.

“Well hello there,” He greets, bumping their noses together, biting his lip when Bokuto bumps back harder, smiling wide. Bokuto’s hands come up behind him, rubbing across his back and sliding to his waist, big and warm and holding him together. Being this close, Kuroo can feel the solid muscle below him, against him - hot, calloused skin detectable even through his shirt.

“Tetsu- Tetsu, you know I love you more than anything?”

“Oh yeah?”

“More than anything else,”

“Even owls?”

“Yeah.”

“More than volleyball?”

“ _Anything_.”

“That’s a lot of things, Kou.”

“I just love you a lot, Tetsu!” And this time, he meets his eyes to say it, fingers tight on his waist, talons carefully shifted away. There’s something strange Kuroo can’t place in it, a certain playfulness missing in his gaze. His gut clenches uneasily, and he can feel the air displace against his tail as it unwinds from it’s resting place.

“What’s brought this on, Bo? Were things okay at work today?” Kuroo leans in to him, brushes back the wilting strands of his fringe from Bokuto’s eyes, “You took your meds this morning, right baby?”

“Yeah! I did, and everything was fine - jeez, Tetsu. I’m fine. I’m the best, it was just -”

“Just?”

“They said not to say - so please don’t be mad at them, or anything, it’s my fault - but, Kenma said you had a bad day, yesterday.”

Kuroo leans back abruptly.

“Oh.”

“Don’t be mad, please, I asked because you didn’t look good this morning. Well, not good, I like how you look, I’m sorry Tetsu, you know I didn’t mean-”

“I’m not mad, Bo.”

And he wasn’t, he just didn’t like that now he couldn’t pretend to be at his best. Now Bokuto knew he was lying, play-acting at something he wasn’t. Now Bokuto had to be worried, had to _reassure_ Kuroo like some kind of lost child because Kuroo can’t get his shit together-

“I just don’t like it when you have bad days. You always forget how much I love you.”

Bokuto pouts. Tears prick at his eyes. 

“Ah, Bo - you, you can’t just say stuff like that.” He tells him, because he can't. He can't handle too much love - you see, he's not made like that. Of big easy spaces waiting to be filled, collecting compliments and praise and love in baskets to pile to the ceiling. Kuroo is made of small spaces: his childhood bedroom, cubicles of the boys bathroom, the concrete cavern under the bridge to the river where the other kids weren't allowed to play. Places without expectation. Places he can curl up, hold his legs tight to him, and let himself float away.

He doesn't have space for what Bokuto offers. It spills out, instead.

“But it’s true! And - you’re crying, I shouldn’t have said anything, jeez.”

“Come here, you stupid owl.” 

He leans into Bokuto’s chest, wraps one arm around his waist and lets the other hang over to the zenith of his back where a small cluster of feathers, symbolic of where his wings begin when shifted, lay. It was the softest spot , in his half shift, full of layered downy feathers that tickle at his fingertips as he brushes through them. Bokuto melts at the very first touch, slumping easily into Kuroo’s arms like so much hot wax. Kuroo presses his closed eyes into the juncture of Bokuto’s neck, ignores the wetness staining them. He gives himself that moment, Bokuto’s hand liquefying his spine with gentle strokes up the edge of his ears, let’s a quiet purr roll out into the silence.

Bokuto squeezes him tighter at that. 

(It’s nice, having a partner who knows all the sensitive points in a shift.)

“What’s going on, Tetsu?” Kuroo nuzzles deeper, sighing heavily. “If you don’t want to talk, we don’t have to, I don’t want to push it, but I don’t care how you’re feeling - oh, no, I mean - you’re important. To me. Happy or sad, you’re _my_ stupidly long cat, you know? Tetsu?”

His chest aches at the words, and he has to force back more tears with a series of deep breaths, hands going shaky against Bokuto’s back. It’s all so saccharine, too good to be true, the way Bokuto’s words head straight towards the heart of his insecurities in the relationship. It hurts a little, because Kuroo knows that insight won’t come from nowhere, that Bokuto must be feeling some degree of what he does during his mood swings. Guilt, like he’s a burden Kuroo as to deal with, rather than someone he loves and wants to support.

He puts so much vulnerability forth between them, trusts Kuroo with parts of himself too fragile for others; and here’s Kuroo, too scared to even admit there’s anything wrong. He doesn’t deserve Bo. He really doesn’t.

He pulls back, trailing along Bokuto’s ribs, willing himself to meet those large, amber eyes.

“I’ll - I want to tell you.” He admits, carefully and slow in his enunciation, “But later, okay? I’m... I’m tired today, Kou. I want to eat these noodles and cuddle, and watch something bad, okay?” He feels frayed, a worn coat with holes in the pockets, a button or two missing. The sludge in his veins is too close to the surface, too fresh where his thighs continue to ache - an open wound, one he can’t irritate further. Not right now.

Maybe, when things are softer.

Bokuto catches his hands in his, pulls Kuroo out of his head with minute effort. 

“Whenever you want, Testu.” He drops a kiss on Kuroos nose, squints his eyes in a funny little way Kuroo knows means he’s holding back a grin. Blood runs hot under his cheeks, and his smile trembles when he presses it to Bo’s lips.

“I love you, Kou, so much.”

(With him, Kuroo is a little less dark. )

**Author's Note:**

> aaand it's here, after many months! this is something orginally written for the hq bang but i left for moral reasons. nevertheless i'm really,, dare i say,, proud of this fic. it's been a fun experience changing up my writing style and writing scenes instead of just feelings, and i would die for kuroo , so
> 
> i hope you enjoy and please don't hesitate to leave comments/kudos. i'll say this a million times but i visits my inbox regularly to re-read comments (and maybe cry a little) - yall get me through the days i dont even wanna get up. thank you
> 
> big thank you to snow, my brilliant beta. i couldn't have asked for anyone better, they've been such an encouraging and accepting presence the last few months and truly deserving of a better thank you for the amount of typos they've had to pick through. find 'em on [AO3 here](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sondeneige/works) and [tumblr here](http://sondeneige.tumblr.com/). (and drop em some love)
> 
> [PLAYLIST](https://open.spotify.com/user/ribcages/playlist/6qbTPTRALBSGnR9s3NWr5C) (spotify)  
> [TUMBLR](http://bakugoz.tumblr.com)  
> [WRITING TUMBLR](https://ariswrites.tumblr.com)
> 
> seeya next chapter o/


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